“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” —John Adams, 1798

“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” —Barack Obama, 2008

Next November, Americans can either vote for preserving our founding principles or abet the continuing cultural degradation, promoted as “social justice,” that energizes the American Left. These leftists increasingly embrace outbursts of violence and intimidation they and their increasingly corrupt media allies legitimize by calling it “The Resistance.”

Anarchy is more like it.

Leftist thugs rioted in three American cities in recent days. On Aug. 3 in Providence, Rhode Island, a conservative group calling itself “Resist Marxism” staged a “Providence Freedom Rally” at the Rhode Island State House. It was met by leftist thugs who assaulted the attendees, damaged their equipment, and prevented Rhode Island congressional candidate Daniel Guilmette from speaking.

On Aug. 4 in Portland, Oregon, hundreds of “alt-right” protesters were attacked by antifa counterprotesters throwing rocks and bottles. Four days later, left-wing thugs protesting police brutality at that rally stormed Portland City Hall, assaulting one security guard and fighting with several others.

On Aug 5 in Berkeley, California, antifa thugs smashed the windows of a Marine Corps recruiting post, damaged 21 city vehicles, tossed explosives at Berkeley Police and Alameda County Sheriff’s Office officers, and clashed with alt-right protesters. Twenty arrests were made and dozens of weapons were confiscated.

These leftist groups invariably justify their violence with the same assertion: Those who engage in “hate speech” must be silenced, even if it requires breaking the law to do so.

Thus on Saturday in Charlottesville, Virginia, and yesterday in Washington, DC, police maintained a heavy presence to prevent a similar outbreak of violence that occurred in Charlottesville last year. Violence the ACLU says was abided by police ordered to “not intervene until given command to do so.”

Law enforcement officials’ seeming disinterest in protecting the “wrong” Americans, or allowing the “right” ones to riot, hasn’t been confined to Charlottesville. Police backed off during a 2017 antifa protest in Berkeley, and the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco is allowing a lawsuit to proceed against the San Jose Police Department and the city for allegedly endangering the lives of Trump supporters at a 2016 rally at the McEnery Convention Center. Despite several exits being available, police allegedly directed rally attendees to leave from a single exit where anti-Trump thugs were waiting. And despite Trump supporters being beaten or struck by objects, no one was arrested except three people who assaulted the police.

All of these incidents pale in comparison to the machinations of Portland Democrat Mayor Ted Wheeler. For 38 days, a mob was allowed to maintain a makeshift camp from which they emerged to lead protests against ICE and demand the agency’s abolition. Signs were displayed calling ICE employees “Nazis” and “white supremacists.” Vandals wrote the names of staffers on a wall and encouraged others to publish agents’ private info online. One staffer was followed when he went to pick up his daughter, and protesters showed up at his home. Both ICE officials and area locals were harassed, including a 53-year-old disabled resident whose wheelchair was damaged.

Wheeler’s response? “I do not want the @PortlandPolice to be engaged or sucked into a conflict, particularly from a federal agency that I believe is on the wrong track,” tweeted the mayor, who conveniently doubles as the city’s police commissioner. “If [ICE is] looking for a bailout from this mayor, they are looking in the wrong place.”

Even when federal police mobilized from out of state moved to reopen the office on June 28, Wheeler remained defiant. “I join those outraged by ICE actions separating parents from their children, and support peaceful protest to give voice to our collective moral conscience,” he asserted in a statement.

Collective moral conscience? Try government-endorsed thuggery.

One might think such overt lawlessness would elicit a response by the Department of Justice. Unfortunately, the DOJ is headed by a seemingly comatose Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Thus, as the Left moves seamlessly from law-defying sanctuary cities to consequence-free actions against ICE employees — employees whose 911 calls were deliberately ignored — one is left to conclude similar incidents will be forthcoming.

And while the nation waits, the “get in their faces” exhortations of a reliably unhinged Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) remain the order of the day. On Aug. 6 in Philadelphia, conservatives Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens were harassed by the self-designated “Philly Antifa” while they were attempting to eat breakfast. Despite Owens being a black American, the mob chanted “f—k white supremacy,” and video shows one protester dumping a bottle of water on Kirk, an assault the group justified in a tweet. “Charlie Kirk’s disgusting homophobic, racist, bigoted presence is met by some proper Philadelphia hostility,” it stated.

Owens and Kirk declined to press charges. That’s a mistake. Those who foment anarchy must be fully held to account, or they will do it again.

Why has violence directed against conservatives and pro-Trump supporters become acceptable? Ignorance, arrogance, and spinelessness. Nothing speaks to ignorance better than a video of Ivy League students who, at best could only name one or two of the First Amendment’s five guaranteed freedoms — and at worst remain convinced that “offensive” speech can be banned.

Nothing speaks to arrogance better than the New York Times’ recent hire of overt racist and cop-basher Sarah Jeong, best described by columnist Heather Mac Donald as “an entirely typical product of the contemporary academy,” where students are “inundated by the message that they are either the bearers of white privilege or its victims” as soon as they arrive.

The Times has made it clear it buys into the contemptible leftist assertion that only whites can be racist because they control the levers of power. “Deplorable” Americans, whose “privilege” consists of working hard every day to make ends meet, might disagree.

Which brings us to spinelessness. Americans need to ask themselves why a “blue wave” might even be a possibility when 54% of Democrats support giving illegal aliens the right to vote, party leaders have called for abolishing ICE, and Democrat officials openly embrace socialism and tacitly embrace anti-Semitism.

In other words, where is the GOP? One gets the disquieting sense Republicans are either rank cynics who believe being the lesser of two really odious evils is good enough to maintain their congressional majority absent an all-out effort to do so, or insufferable hypocrites willing to lose that majority as a “reasonable” trade-off for reinstating the status quo upended by Trump’s America First agenda. And if GOP losses in November enable an impeachment-addicted Democrat Party to upend Trump’s presidency as well?

You have to break a few nationalist, patriotic eggs to remake a globalist, Ruling Class omelette.